Marmy, aka Kebab, and the Multitudes

 As you may have noticed from the earlier post about Mat-man, I mentioned we were looking at a family of stray cats that were roaming the city.  It soon became a ritualistic saying ‘There’s a cat.  There’s a dog.  And another cat.’  Istanbul seems to be full of stray cats and dogs, with the odd parrot (photo taken, yet not shown).  Above is the little ginger cat that we saw, avec mon leg, as we were walking up to the fortress after our boat trip.  He was a little friendly fellow, and quite…well, how can I put it?  He got around, so to speak.  He was liberal with his affections for the tourists.  And fickle.  Once he’d said hello, he’d spot other people and prance off to do the leg thing with them.  Humph.  We didn’t give him a name.

These two dogs were at the top of the hill, after climbing up countless steps, trudging through mud, tackling wind, rain and hail (!) too.  Top dog was just sitting there, almost begging to be photographed, so I had to do it, and I have to say I’m very proud of how it turned out.  Could be a B&W pic, this.  Bottom dog was rather like the ginger, aforementioned, cat – liberal with affections, as can possibly be seen from the pic – mouth open as if to say ‘Who can I say hello to next?’. 

  Below is whom we named ‘Mountain Cat – grrr’, with an obligatory ‘grr’ at the end.  He, or indeed she, was spotted on the way up, but only approached on the way down.  As soon as Ange got near, Mountain Cat grr decided to play nice, and then swiped at her.  Needless to say, we hurried down further steps to escape the wrath.

You might be asking yourself, where is Marmy, aka Kebab?  Unfortunately, I didn’t have my camera with me, but I so wish I did.  He came to see us in the bar – hence in a previous post I mentioned about getting royally drunk with a cat.  Marmy, aka Kebab, is said cat.  He popped in, and went to another table to scrounge for food.  Then he met us.  After a little persuasion, he sat down between us, laid on my scarf and went to sleep, curled up in a little fuzzy ball of fun.  We joked with the barman, and he said where did we think all the meat came from for the kebabs?  That’s where the aka comes from.  Oh, and he wasn’t ginger come to think of it.  Don’t know why Ange decided to call him Marmalade.  Strange lady.  I thought Florence was a better name.  Even for a boy.